Escape velocity online

a COMPLETE rewrite of EV

I have recently got broadband, and have moved away from single player RPG's such as EVN. I have been playing a lot of mmorpgs (massivly multiplayer online role playing games) such as runescape.

I have decided that I am going to write an online game very similar to EVN (with enough differences to not get sued), for online play. I would use visual basic for the main game and a java graphics engine. This is the same as runescape, and it has 3D graphics.

It would still have bots, and when killed, they would drop credits or if they were boarded there would be a chance to remove their weapons. The same would be true of players, but there would be safe areas where PKing is not allowed.

This would be (hopefully) impossible for anyone to make their own plug-ins, but I think I will have a update submit system and a developing program like EVNEW, so that any mods people want to make can be validated, and mabey added to the game if they are wanted.

I'm afraid that I could only make this for PC's, but I have a friend who might be able to port it to macs.

I am not looking for team members, and will only take them if I realy get bogged down in it.

---------
Smither
~I think I am, therefore I am, I think~

Be prepared for your own self-created nightmare, is all I have to say. It took ATMOS a couple years, I think, to program EVN. For a single programmer to be doing all the work himself on a game possibily even more difficult to code...

I wish you good luck with it. Well, more like peserverance...

i think i will relese it as soon as i have it working, with only about 10 ships, outfits, systems, etc. then add more as i do them, with feedback from players.

i might just have it top down graphics, that would save a lot of work for me, and download time for players.

This post has been edited by Smither : 31 December 2004 - 11:12 AM

I think that ATMOS took five years, as it was a mostly done TC for EVO that had to be seriously redone to work with the Nova engine.

anyone know how long it took to do EVO?

Good luck....you've got some tough design work ahead of you, and even tougher coding. I know some Java and some C++, and I know network interfaces, (never used VB), but getting it all to work together is going to be a challenge.

Good luck, Smither.

Personally I would not reccomend Java. A lot of people in the world don't have superfast computers (like myself) and Java- especially Java graphics- slows things down a lot. If you can write much of the engine in a compiled language, why not all of it?

The people whom I know well who have played the EV series and love it all have less capable computers- this is why they don't play all of the 'superrealistic' and boring 1st person shooters. I think that it's in the EV tradition to make something that doesn't take a superhigh graphics capacity to play.

This post has been edited by rmx256 : 31 December 2004 - 11:28 AM

rmx256, on Dec 31 2004, 11:26 AM, said:

If you can write much of the engine in a compiled language, why not all of it?

cos VB doesnt have the graphics capibilitys i need.

and i want it to run in a window, so that people can have MSN or ICR open at the same time. VB is the best i know for this. if there are better, i would like to know about them.

i g2g now, new year party. ill b back tommorow

This post has been edited by Smither : 31 December 2004 - 11:32 AM

XCMD's? Do they exist for other languages?

Perhaps I'm just too low-tech for this thread.

I hope, whatever you end up doing with this, the writing isn't like:

Quote

i g2g now, new year party. ill b back tommorow

cos VB doesnt have the graphics capibilitys i need.

This post has been edited by rmx256 : 31 December 2004 - 11:36 AM

Back for a second.
Yea, thats just how I type when im in a hurry.

I'll write everything in word and copy it when it red and green lines go away...

ATMOS didn't program EVN, Matt Burch did, and I'd assume he used a lot of recycled code from the first two games. To program it just to work on a non-network basis took at least 6 years. If you want to single-handedly make a MMO EV, well good luck to you, but I don't think it'll work very well.

If you make it, I'd advise you to have Ambrosia as your distributer, since this topic in itself could be used as evidence if they ever did want to sue you. Plus, they're nice people, and have quite a good record.

I think it might be wise to aim for simply multiplayer, rather than MMO. That's bound to be a hell of a lot simpler to accomplish.

Plus, if you design it well, it could theoretically scale up to MMO in the future.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 31 December 2004 - 01:28 PM

Good luck, and try not to waste 10+ years of your life trying to make this.

Hmm... interesting... Anyway, I have to say that Java is horrible for making games... Just to let you know.

Sorry to burst your bubble...but:

http://www.vendetta-online.com

Looks neat, but I think that I'll keep working on Kemet.

Smittens, on Dec 31 2004, 07:04 PM, said:

Sorry to burst your bubble...but:

http://www.vendetta-online.com
View Post

i'll download it and have a look, but i think ill try to get mine working too, if only for the intelectual exercise.